Micro-Interactions Have Macro Implications

Micro-interactions take the customer experience of your brand to the next level.

They are the kind of detailed considerations that create exceptional mobile experiences, and can reinforce your brand’s appeal by humanizing an online experience. Within the limited screen space of a mobile device, micro-interactions become even more important.

What Are Micro-Interactions?

According to the Next Web, “A micro-interaction is any single task-based engagement with a device.” Let’s walk through a typical online shopping experience to see some concrete examples.

Skeleton screens or Skeleton loading. You know those grey bars that come up on Facebook while you’re waiting for the app to load? Those aren’t there by accident. That’s a micro-interaction designed to let you know that the page is loading, even if it might be slow. Skeleton screens can positively impact perceived performance, making it more likely that people will wait patiently for the page to load.

Animation styles. How do the animations ease across the screen? Do they bounce? Do they float? What mood are they conveying? Whatever you choose, it should align with your brand. Little animated touches can even make an interaction, such as adding an item to your cart, addictive.

Communication. Micro-interactions can communicate a status or feedback, tell the user the result of an action, or prompt them to take an action (think sliding down the page on a mobile device to refresh content). The trick is making sure these actions don’t feel gimmicky, since they will be repeated numerous times.

Checkout. The checkout is often plagued with forms and can be a high point of abandonment for customers, especially on the mobile web. But there’s certain micro-interactions that can remove subtle annoyances to make the experience more pleasing. For example, when a person types in their credit card info, the request for CVV can change to show an icon of their brand of card and an example of the placement of the CVV on that particular AMEX, Visa, Discover, etc.

Differentiate Your Brand

Not only do micro-interactions lead to a better UX – which leads to higher conversion rates – they enrich your customers’ online experiences in subtle and useful ways. They take something that can be monotonous and use animations to humanize and add emotion. Micro-interactions are a powerful way to not only connect with your customers, but to differentiate your brand from others.